Kelly and Brendan’s Adorable Engagement Session by Isabel March Photography

There’s nothing I love more than a compelling love story, and Kelly & Brendan’s journey to engagement will definitely put a smile across your face. These two cuties stole my heart with their tale of love, distance, and years of dedication to one another. To no surprise Isabel March Photography caught every adorable moment of their engagement session, which had stops in Center City, Penns Landing, and South Philadelphia. Kelly and Brendan are all set to wed October 9, 2015 at The Manor House of Commonwealth, and we can’t wait to see their lovely wedding photos!

Words from Kelly and Brendan (BK): We met in college at Temple University through intramural sports. Bk worked intramural and I played volleyball. The first time we ever met BK was keeping score at one of my games. I thought nothing of it besides giving him a hard time for checking out my friends as they walked away (typical boy!). Usually BK worked football and was just filling in that week for a friend, but after that first time he kept coming back to work our games. He never had the guts to ask me out himself but tagged along with a friend of mine one night to a party we were having at our house. The rest is pretty much history. We spent tons of time together but it took him almost the whole school year to actually ask me out and even then our first date was at the Subway on campus on – I paid for myself! After college BK moved to Austin with his friends for a year and I moved to Baltimore to go to grad school where I would eventually stay for another two years after school was over to work. We lived at least three hours apart for four years. The distance wasn’t easy but we took it one day at a time and lots of flights, long car rides, weekend trips and seven years later we are exactly where we both always hoped we would be! (Except for the whole Kelly Kelly situation, of course J/K).

Kelly: Life is exactly how I hoped it would be with BK. I’m always laughing, he keeps me calm when I’m crazy, boring things become fun, and even on my worst days he tells me I’m beautiful and means it. Nothing feels too hard to handle when BK is around.

Brendan: My favorite part about Kelly is how thoughtful she is. There is literally nothing she forgets about on a daily basis. She is the other half of my brain and my calendar, and without her I would be lost.

Proposal Story (Written by BK)

I had always had Kelly’s birthday weekend (to avoid suspicion of any plans for the day) as my target date for proposing. So it all started a couple months prior when I met Mr. Rodenbach for breakfast to get his permission to wed his lovely daughter. After some begging and pleading and a lot of coffee, he finally agreed to give me his permission, which was great because I had already bought the ring, and that could have been an expensive mistake.

With permission granted, Operation Kelly Kelly could commence. Other than the actual plan of how I was going to propose I always knew two things: that I wanted our family and friends involved and that I wanted pictures of the moment. With that in mind I started spreading the word for people to keep Saturday November 22nd open. The next step was securing a highly talented photographer to capture our beautiful moment perfectly. Luckily for me, my brother Daniel’s girlfriend Alison was up to the task and a couple weeks before the day we scouted possible spots where we could get the best photo opportunity. The next couple weeks were just ironing out the details and hoping nobody slipped up and blew the surprise.

Since Friday the 21st was her actual birthday I had to do my best to keep her celebrating to a minimum so that she would be fresh for the next day. Luckily Kelly’s friends and roommates helped me out with that and got her to bed at a reasonable hour. That morning I cooked a delicious breakfast and we drank a couple mimosas while we watched some Game of Thrones. The only thing Kelly knew is that she had to be ready to roll at 2:30pm, but I would not share with her any of the plans for the day. With Kelly asking questions non-stop we made the 10 block walk to Broad Street to catch the subway, as I tried as hard as possible to keep Kelly on my right side with the ring in my left pocket. As each stop on the Broad Street Line came and went, Kelly just looked at me to see if we would be getting off yet or not. It wasn’t till good old Cecil B. Moore Temple University that I got up and motioned for her to get off the subway. Walking through campus under the rouse of “having to print out the tickets” for our imaginary event that we were attending we looked around and reminisced about the good old days. Still not knowing exactly what I would say other than “will you marry me?” we rounded the corner hoping there wouldn’t be too many people on Polett Walk so that we could have our moment. Then, as we passed the campus police station and right before we hit Broad Street I mumbled some words that I’m not even sure made sense, got down on one knee, and popped the question. We hugged, Kelly cried (obviously), and Ali popped out of her trashcan to show us the pictures which turned out perfect. I then suggested that we grab a drink at the infamous (among Temple grads) Draught Horse on campus to celebrate the moment. As we walked over to the bar discussing all the times she thought something was up and all the times I thought the surprise had been compromised, I was still nervous for the last surprise. Finally, we walked into the Draught Horse to the delight of all our family and friends ready, with drinks in hands, to celebrate what had been a long time coming. For the remainder of the day and into the night we celebrated the previous 7 years and toasted to 70 more with the people we love the most.

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[…] past Fall! We’re so excited to share their lovely wedding photos, following their awesome Philadelphia engagement session. All of the life, love, and laughter filled throughout this memorable day was captured beautifully […]